The Slim Interpreter

The Slim interpreter runs from the command-line, taking the name of the main module of the program to be run, as its only parameter.

The interpreter is not interactive, and running a program via the interpreter is very similar to running the executable produced by the compiler and linker. However, unlike the linker, the intepreter does not require a linker parameter file.

The main advantage of using the interpreter is that it reduces the time-consuming edit-compile-link-run cycle to a faster edit-run cycle. The disadvantage of the interpeter is that interpreted programs run at least an order of magnitude slower than compiled programs.

If your interpreter is correctly installed, you should be able to invoke it to run module xyz (found in file xyz.slm) by typing the following at the command line:

  slimi xyz

Any other parameters appearing in the command-line are passed on to the program being interpreted. For example

  slimi xyz par1 par2 par3

  xyz par1 par2 par3

Command-line parameters are made available as a list of strings assigned to variable Command_line, exported from the standard library module, Opsys.